When he described the manuscripts in his country’s National Library, Ioannes Sakkelion (1815-1891) identified one of them as containing ‘the Psalms usually recited in monasteries’. By way of his catalogue, this codex (number 33) made it into Alfred Rahlfs’s census of Greek Old Testament manuscripts. At present it is the only Horologion registered therein.

An ὡρολόγιον is a book that contains psalms, hymns, and prayers for recitation at certain times of the day and night: Matins (at sunrise), Prime (ca. 7:00 AM), Terce (ca. 9:00 AM), Sext (at noon), None (ca. 3:00 PM), Vespers (at sunset), Compline (after Vespers), and Nocturns (at midnight). The oldest extant copies, of which this is one, date from the ninth century. All in all, about a hundred handwritten Horologia survive from before ca. AD 1600. Those that contain complete psalm text (rather than just the first words of the respective psalms) will soon be added to the revised census of Septuagint manuscripts.

The aforesaid Athens manuscript is a bit unusual. A standard printed Horologion such as this one (published in 1535) starts with the midnight office and has Psalms 50, 118, 120, and 133 for Nocturns, Psalms 19, 20, 3, 37, 62, 87, 102, 142, and 148-150 for Matins, Psalms 5, 89, 100, 45, 91, and 92 for Prime, Psalms 16, 24, 50, 29, 31, and 60 for Terce, Psalm 53, 54, 90, 55, 56, and 69 for Sext, Psalms 102, 145, 33, and 144 for the so-called Typika, Psalms 83, 84, 85, 112, 137, and 139 for None, Psalms 103, 140, 141, 129, and 116 for Vespers, and Psalms 4, 6, 12, 24, 30, 90, 50, 101, 69, and 142 for Compline. The Athens manuscript, on the other hand, begins with the evening office and contains Psalms 137, 112, 86, 2, 40, and 58 for Vespers, Psalms 4, 6, 12, 30, 101, 90, 50, 69, and 142 for Compline, Psalms 118, 120, and 133 for Nocturns, Psalms 99, 134, 135, 109, 110, 71, 94, 117, 44, 21, 34, 68, 106, 81, 67, 56, 23, 46, 74, 45, 92, 98, 49, 93, 95, 96, and 66 for Matins, ‘the usual psalms’ (unspecified) for Prime, Terce, Sext, and None, and Psalms 22 and 145 for the Typika. The peculiarities marked here in bold are not found in any other Greek Book of Hours that I know, so this manuscript must belong to a rare, as yet unstudied Horologion tradition.

The Athens codex has yet another remarkable feature: together with a second manuscript (codex 857) in the same library, this is one of the two earliest witnesses to a cento (patchwork) of Psalm verses compiled by the Byzantine polymath Nicephorus Blemmydes (1197-1272). It might even go back to the author’s lifetime, since the handwriting in which it is copied can be dated on palaeographic grounds to the thirteenth century.